


Repetition

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Parallels, Possibly Pre-Slash, Pre-Canon, Truly I Don't Know How To Tag This, Which is a first for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:19:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: The first time Tomas fastens his collar, he thinks, "At last, I can use this to do some good."The first time Marcus' collar is fastened for him, he thinks, "At last, I can be used to do some good."





	Repetition

**Author's Note:**

> Two lives, in parallel.

There is a little boy in Chicago who is watching his parents kill each other.

Tomas Ortega can tell, even at that young age. His mother is crying all night in the bathroom. His father is crying all night in a bar. He comes home sour and reeking in the early hours of the morning, and shouts in the bedroom till he loses his voice.

Tomas is young enough to share a room with his sister. He sleeps on the top bunk, and she sleeps on the bottom. Now and then he’ll hear her crying just like mom, and he hates that, so he’ll creep down the ladder as quietly as he can and ask to play with her stuffed animals.

Olivia always says yes, and they spend many midnights on the floor together, staging wars between the teddy bears and the tigers. She has a monkey with a wire in its tail so it retains its shape, and it can hang from things the way a real monkey might. It’s Tomas’ favorite, and Olivia only lets him play with it on special occasions.

***

There is a little boy in Leicestershire who is watching his parents kill each other.

His mum likes to say he looks just like his dad. The same hair, the same wonky mouth. “You’ve got the hands of an artist, son,” she says sweetly, holding his little hands between her palms.

Dad is an artist with his hands. He uses them to pull on Mum’s hair, and choke her until she cries, and when Marcus Keane is seven years old, he picks up a hammer with those hands and brains her so hard in the back of the head that Marcus sees the color of her brain.

Marcus goes a little bit mad.

He leaps for the gun on the wall. It doesn’t take much to pull the trigger of a gun. Only the strength of an artist’s hands.

***

Tomas’ grandmother is a good woman who cooks the best tamales in town and loves Tomas with her whole heart. She tells everyone she meets that he's a good boy, the best boy. If Tomas is with her she’ll reach down and ruffle his hair until he wriggles away in embarrassment.

 _“Everyone is special in the eyes of God,”_ she is fond of saying. Her Spanish is a warm, familiar croak in the back of her throat. _“You’re His special favorite, little lion. Don’t you want to be good for Him?”_

He does, and he is, or at least he tries to be. Tomas thrives on attention, drinking it up like a sponge. He’s rarely at home, preferring to play football when he’s not as school, but when he’s at home he spends his time praying with his grandmother and tediously picking his way through his homework. Tomas doesn’t get why it matters. He’s bound for seminary anyway. Everybody says so. His teachers, his grandmother, the preacher at their chapel.

Everyone in the congregation looks up to that preacher. The slip of white at his throat draws their eyes. Dangerous men are humble when they speak to him, and women are friendly. Perhaps friendlier than they might otherwise be.

The whole town revolves around him. The vendors know him by name, and the buskers play louder when he passes. He always has a coin for them, a smile, a gentle word.

Tomas notices all these things.

He isn’t aware that he notices, but he does.

***

The Church buys Marcus Keane for five pounds.

They put him in a small, damp room with the other boys, and a man with a bald head and a stained cassock paces back and forth in front of them and reminds them that they aren’t special. The Lord does not play favorites, and neither does the Church. “You are here,” says Father Sean, “not because you were special, but because you were cheap.”

The halls echo with the screams of the damned.

Marcus listens to Father Sean’s speeches and tries not to be afraid. He is only a giant, and the Bible is full of giants. All it takes to beat them is a teaspoon full of faith, and Marcus has faith in spades.

Father Sean doesn’t know what Marcus saw.

He doesn’t know the glory of it. The great and terrible noise of Him, too loud and too beautiful for the mind of a twelve-year-old boy. The veil before the temple was ripped open from top to bottom, the fabric of reality tore itself in half, and there He was. That wonderful, all-encompassing heavenly Father, made of love and love and _love,_ too big and too terrible to ignore.

Marcus keeps his mouth shut. He locks that vision away in his heart while the sound of His voice is still ringing in his ears.

***

Tomas at sixteen is as bronzed and beautiful as an athlete. He spends his birthday building houses in Nicaragua with six other teenagers, and he’s the only one among them with no desire to be a missionary. Traveling doesn’t suit him. If he wants a church of his own, he knows he’ll have to settle down.

The girls notice him, and love him the way they love all forbidden fruit. The virginity of a boy going into the clergy is a tempting prize. Tomas notices the girls too, and pretends he doesn’t enjoy the way they admire his muscles as he labors in the sun. He tastes a handful of stolen kisses, but they leave him feeling dirty and unsatisfied. He prays away the guilt during his morning quiet time.

It never works completely. The lust for soft lips against his own is only a drop in the ocean of his desires. But the value of a Catholic priest is in the number of beautiful things they give up for their faith, and the foremost desire of Tomas’ heart has always been to be valuable.

He tells himself that it will all be worth it.

***

“Stinging nettles,” says Marcus, slouched in the doorway.

It’s lunchtime and the dorms are deserted. The new boy is the lone exception, stirring on the edge of his bunk and dabbing at his bruised eye with a damp paper towel. He gives Marcus a narrow, flinty-eyed look.

Marcus knows he’s an “older boy” now. He’s grown into a scraggly, scrappy teenager with scars on his shoulders and pencil smudges on his hands. His peers have long since discovered that being an “older boy” means they are entitled to make life a living hell for the younger ones.

Not on Marcus’ fucking watch.

“You’re one of them,” says the new boy. He’s four inches shorter than Marcus, and his shoes are nearly worn through.

“You can get ‘em from behind the infirmary,” says Marcus, ignoring the boy’s scorn. “Put ‘em in their trousers while they sleep. They’ll be in for a day of blind agony. Do that once or twice, and they’ll part like the Red Sea when you pass by.”

The new boy eyes him warily. “Who’s to say I won’t put them in your trousers instead?”

Marcus shrugs. “Good faith?”

The new boy looks down at the ground. He crumples the paper towel in one hand and doesn’t speak.

“Where’d you come from then?” Marcus asks, coming over to sit next to him on the bunk.

“It doesn’t matter where I came from,” says the new boy, with all the firm ferocity of a boy who came from a very bad place indeed.

“It always matters where you came from,” says Marcus, for the same reason.

The new boy scoffs but he doesn’t deny it. Marcus suspects that he has plans to better himself. He has the look of a boy with the audacity to want things.

“I’m Keane,” says Marcus, offering his hand.

“Bennett,” says the new boy, and he shakes it.

“Tell you what, Bennett,” says Marcus, “I’ll keep an eye on you, and you keep and eye on me. Yeah?”

Bennett says yes.

The arrangement sticks for decades.

***

The first time Tomas fastens his collar, he thinks, _at last, I can use this to do some good._

***

The first time Marcus’ collar is fastened for him, he thinks, _at last, I can be used to do some good._

***

Father Tomas is hiding in the bathroom of his own empty apartment, reading a letter from a woman he cannot touch. The way she writes about his body makes his blood run hot. The ache in his heart only grows stronger when he slips his hand beneath his briefs to take the edge off.

Tomorrow is Sunday. His first day at St. Anthony’s. Tomas’ chance to cradle this dying parish in both hands and lift it out of the ashes. He will stand before the congregation- _his_ congregation- and they will look to him for guidance. Afterwards he’ll take their confessions and absolve them of their sins.

Tomas can do that. He has that power. The power to bless, and absolve, and sanctify.

He knows he shouldn’t be here, abusing himself in the bathroom, but he is and he can’t fucking stop. Not when Jessica’s words fill his head, conjuring thoughts and images that keep him up at night. He danced at her wedding, for God’s sake. He has a _church._ For the first time in his life, people are looking to him to shepherd them into the light. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this. _He shouldn’t._

Tomas climaxes with a silent gasp, and tells himself that this will be the last time.

It isn’t.

***

Father Marcus walks like he’s got an army of angels at his back. He never loses a soul.

He crashes through life like thunder, his voice a cacophonous roar. Bennett is like lightning in that he gets there first, shines brighter, and never strikes the same place twice. They work together when they have to and apart when they can get away with it. Bennett’s grip gets tighter as Marcus’ leash gets longer. They see the world on the Vatican’s dime.

Marcus lives on scraps, but he lives, and that is enough. The world outside England is infinitely more colorful and vibrant than he ever could have imagined. In Venezuela he sees a flock of young couples through the lit windows of a dancing school. Marcus would like to learn to tango one day, but something tells him his body isn’t suited for it.

So he moves on, city to city, country to country. He sees the Northern Lights in Iceland, and walks in the footsteps of Christ in Jerusalem, and tastes the sweet honey-spice of clove cigarettes in Berlin. He’s there when the wall falls, and though at first he feels like he’s blundered in on something that is not meant for him, he finds himself swept up in the hysteria, the emotional high of the city. Someone kisses him against a wall, a man Marcus has never seen before and will never see again, and Marcus kisses him back.

God’s grace doesn’t leave him. It thrums in his blood like a heavy bass line.

When he returns to his hotel room, his heart still stuttering in his chest, Marcus wonders if he should pray for forgiveness. For the first time, he feels like he doesn’t need to.

And now more than ever, he wants to learn to tango.

***

The responsibilities of a single mother weigh heavily on Olivia, though Tomas knows she’ll never complain. He volunteers to take Luis off her hands every Saturday and it’s a good arrangement for both of them. Tomas is happy to have the company and he doesn’t mind at all if Luis spends most of his time playing video games.

Tomas grows used to the new routine. Him with his reading glasses and his notebooks full of neat cursive, writing a homily on the couch, and Luis sitting curled up in an armchair with his DS. Tomas has learned the names of more Pokémon than he cares to know.

He loves that boy. Loves him the way a father loves his child.

Tomas remembers the nervous anticipation of the drive to the hospital. He’d bought a little blue New Testament and a droopy-eared stuffed dog in the gift shop on the way in. Olivia’s ex had hugged him in the waiting room and Tomas had hugged him back, all enmity forgotten. _Eight pounds, three ounces. Do you want to hold him?_

***

Bennett finds Marcus lounging in a sunbeam with his feet up and all of Mexico City laid out before him. “This cannot continue, Marcus,” he says. “These people are scared.”

“Scared?” Marcus replies. “You forgotten Haiti? How they tied a bedsheet around that girl’s neck? Hung her from the branches of a mango tree?”

Marcus digs his fingers into an orange and splits it open. A thin line of juice drips down his wrist. He eats with relish, unconscious of the mess. _That’s the difference between us,_ Bennett thinks bitterly. _I can’t abide a mess._

The years have not been kind to Marcus Keane. The lines of his face are worn deep as trenches, and decades of having his every secret shame rubbed in his face have given his eyes a wistful, beaten-dog look.

Bennett knows better.

He’s seen the man fight. He’s a pit bull, not a mongrel. As long as Marcus isn’t given too long a leash, Bennett is glad to let him bite.

“I remember Haiti,” he tells Marcus. He doesn’t.

“While we did nothing?”

“I trust you’ve made progress?”

“Every day is progress,” Marcus says wearily. He gives Bennett an ugly look. “The power’s in the repetition.”

***

Tomas wakes up alone, his head ringing and his sheets sticky with sweat. For one tremulous moment, he wonders if this is what other priests mean when they speak of the beatific vision.

He buries his face in his hands, trying to relive the dream in his mind. The memories are as clear as spring water. It had been beautiful. Nightmarish. Divine in every sense of the word. Tomas clasps his hands together and prays feverishly for that dream to return. He prays for its ceaseless repetition. If this is the only glimpse he is to have of the divine, then it is enough. It is enough for a lifetime.

The man in his dreams had been beautiful, blessed with power and authority that Tomas would never have. “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” Tomas whispers, though he doesn’t even know the man’s name. “May He be gracious to you. May He turn His face towards you and give you peace.”

Tomas prays until his throat is dry. _Father, send me that dream again. Send me another glimpse of Your grace. Send me anything._

_Send me anything._

_Send me anything._

***

The food is bad, and the company’s even worse.

Twice a day, Marcus sits in a circle with men who are mad, broken, or dying, and one by one they tell the story of how they lost their faith. _It’s not my faith in God that’s fucked,_ Marcus thinks to himself as he grinds his teeth together. _It’s God’s faith in me_.

Brother Simon never lets him speak for too long. “One-on-one therapy is a better fit for you, Marcus. These group sessions are just a formality,” He laughs as he says it, and squeezes Marcus’ shoulder a bit too hard. “Cheer up, champ. You act like you’re a prisoner here!”

His one-on-one sessions are with Brother Simon himself, and they usually consist of a series of probing, unwelcome questions that leave Marcus wanting nothing more than to curl up in a confessional and die there. He prays late into the night, long after lights-out. _Have I not been a good son? Let me hear You. Let me feel Your touch again. I love You. I love You. Send me a lightning strike or a punch in the ribs or a bird to peck out my eyes. Send me anything._

_Send me anything._

_Send me anything._

***

Tomas’ life ought to begin with a clap of thunder. Instead it begins with a song.

_You were meant for me and . . . we’d never part . . ._

He peers into the room at the end of the hall and catches a glimpse of a tall and narrow silhouette, dark against the mid-afternoon sunshine.

_It was a miracle . . . a miracle . . ._

“Father Marcus?”

_Heaven created a . . ._

_Click._ “What do you want?”

Tomas swallows grimly and digs his fingernails into his palms to keep his hands from shaking. “My name is Tomas Ortega. Father Tomas. From St. Anthony’s,” A beat of silence while he realizes that means nothing to anyone outside his parish. “It’s in Chicago.”

“What do you want?”

Still he hasn’t turned. Hasn’t even bothered to look at him.

Not worth his time.

Tomas takes a deep breath, and steps forward into the room.

_I’ll prove that I’m worth his time._

“. . . What can you tell me about demonic possession?”


End file.
